Creationists tell Attenborough to 'burn in hell'
David Attenborough receives hate mail from viewers for not crediting God in his nature programmes.
“They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance,” David said during an interview with the Radio Times about his latest documentary on Charles Darwin and natural selection.
This year marks two centuries since Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the groundbreaking On the Origin of Species was published.
Telling the magazine that he was also asked why he did not give “credit” to the Lord, David continued: “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds.
“I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in East Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball.
“The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”
David told the magazine he was astonished at manifestations of Christian faith.
He said: “It never really occurred to me to believe in God – and I had nothing to rebel against, my parents told me nothing whatsoever.
“But I do remember looking at my headmaster delivering a sermon, a classicist, extremely clever... and thinking, he can’t really believe all that, can he? How incredible!”
David also said it was “terrible, terrible” when creationism and evolution were taught in schools as equivalent, alternative perspectives.
“It’s like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five... Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.”
Speaking about the relationship between people and the rest of nature, David said: “People say to me: ’What is a mosquito for? They’re no good for anything!’
“The basic notion that the world is our oyster, that we have domination over all things, that they are here for us...”
Asked where that view comes from, David replied: “The Bible, of course. Genesis, chapter one.”
Speaking about views 2,000 years ago, he said: “The idea that the Lord had given us a present, that the world is a gift from God... well, the amount of stuff, back then, that the Lord was giving away was limited. We do not have dominion.”
